


chiaroscuro

by catarinquar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Sex, season of secret sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 08:26:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17179397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catarinquar/pseuds/catarinquar
Summary: He wonders how often she does this. How often she’d do it before, knowing he was right on the other side of that wall with his muted Skinemax. If she ever saw him, watched him, or forgot to close the door herself. If, perhaps, she didn’t at all forget to close it now --mid-s7. some case, some motel. mulder finds scully with his name on her lips.





	chiaroscuro

**Author's Note:**

> in answer to a prompt from anon on tumblr (9: i found you, hand buried inside of your underwear, my name whimpered on your lips)

Mulder wakes up rested but hungry as hell. That's what you get for missing dinner, he supposes, but the sheer horror of their current case conspired with the rain against his window and put him to sleep in the late afternoon.

Whatever tentative circadian rhythm he managed to establish with Scully over the last few months, it was gone after two days out here. It's two-fifty am now; he'll be a wreck again around noon.

The connecting door to Scully’s room is ajar and a soft light bleeds out onto the carpet of his own.

He gets up to shuffle through the files and gory photographs spread out on the table, looking for the takeout menu from some local whatever with twenty-four hour delivery. Putting on sweats and a tee is an afterthought, but perhaps if he hadn’t been sliding the cotton down past his ears just two steps from the doorway, he would have heard her as -

Scully’s on her back, one heel planted firmly on the mattress with the other leg stretched out. In the low light from the bedside lamp, she’s cast in a chiaroscuro glow, ivory skin and cream rib-knit contrasting with the black lace of her underwear. One hand is hidden under the fabric; still, while the other moves with the rise and fall of her heaving chest.

Eyes closed, lips parted, she breathes almost without a sound. He’s gotten used to her relative silence in bed - she talks to him but makes him work for even the smallest moan; she forgets to breathe when she comes; sometimes she’ll even shush _him_ in between hazy whispers of _let go_ \- but this, even through these cheap walls? A no-tell motel; no, he would never have heard her.

And he wonders - wonders how often she does this. How often she’d do it before, knowing he was right on the other side of that wall with his muted Skinemax. If she ever saw him, watched him, or forgot to close the door herself. If, perhaps, she didn’t at all _forget_ to close it now -

A spaceship could come crashing straight through the flickering _No Vacancy_ outside and rip up the flooded parking lot; it wouldn't mean a damn thing, he’s grown roots here and couldn’t move if he wanted to.

She’s sensitive after, he knows, and as she removes her hand she whimpers, low in her throat, “God, Mulder…”

He must make a sound himself; the elastic waistband of her underwear snaps and she raises herself up on her elbows, hissing, now; “ _Jesus!”_

“I’m sorry.” His own rough voice takes him by surprise.

She forces out another breath. “Were you watching me?”

“I wasn’t, I only - the door, you hadn’t -” she’s freckled and flushed, copper hair kept so short since February that she can no longer hide behind it, but that little tongue darts out to wet those lips and he realises - she isn’t. He sits down on the edge of the bed. Lets two fingers trace a line from the hollow of her throat, over her gold cross, between her breasts, up to her mouth. “God, Jesus - _you_ , Scully, do you have any idea how fucking beautiful you are?”

And there’s the glint, the shy twitch of her mouth. “Some,” she husks, pressing her lips to his fingers. “You give me some idea.”

“Enough ideas to break the rules, huh?” he teases.

She sits up, drags him closer by his collar, “we said _no sex_. Nothing about -” kisses him, “- fantasizing, or -” again, “- taking care of ourselves.” She reaches down to trace the bulge in his sweats.

He groans, fingering the lace border of her panties. “So how many rules are we breaking now?”

The corner of her mouth twitches again, but she looks past him. There’s a reason death’s best girl was awake alone in the first place, he thinks; her own demons refusing to let her wash the blood and guts of murdered children from her hands as easily as she sheds her gloves.

With penitent hands is how they’ve always touched each other, though.

“I don’t know. None, all of them,” she tells him, drawing her knees up before pushing him down on his back. She climbs over him. “I don’t care about the rules, Mulder.”

**Author's Note:**

> say hi on [tumblr](https://catarinquar.tumblr.com)!


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